Drugo more and Kolektiv Igralke are joining forces! From 28 September to 4 October, the Zoom + Igralke Festival will take place in Rijeka, across venues including Filodrammatica, Kalvarija, and the Croatian Cultural Centre on Sušak, with a focus on new theatre tendencies emerging in Croatia and across Europe.

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Below you will find the event program and introductory notes, and by clicking on the links you can learn more about each performance.

PROGRAM

✺ PERFORMANCES:

Sunday, 28 September, 7 pm
→ Rajna Racz & Marin Živković: Birds-Spies, concert-performance @ KUC Kalvarija

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Monday, 29 September, 7 pm
→ Luka Piletič: Under Control, solo performance @ Filodrammatica
** in English

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Tuesday, 30 September, 7 pm
→ Paula Vogel (text), Tara Manić (director): How I Learned to Drive, play @ Filodrammatica

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Wednesday, 1 October, 7 pm
→ Luka Prinčič: BeYourOwnPlatform, lecture performance @ Filodrammatica
** in English

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Thursday, 2 October, 7 pm
→ Giuseppe Chico & Barbara Matijević: SCREENAGERS Vol.2, interactive play @ Croatian Cultural Centre on Sušak
** in English

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Friday, 3 October, 7 pm
→ Nataša Živković: Sonny, dance theatre performance @ Croatian Cultural Centre on Sušak

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Saturday, 4 October, 7 pm
→ The Feminalz Collective: Tehnoburlesque Image Snatchers, play @ KUC Kalvarija

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✺ INSTALLATION:

29 September – 4 October
→ Lina Akif: Chocolina Pornocabin, video installation @ Filodrammatica

⊗ NO RESERVATIONS REQUIRED

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ZOOM+IGRALKE FESTIVAL 2025: OUT OF CONTROL

To say that many things in life are out of our control would sound like a euphemism. Almost everything is beyond our control: heat waves and climate change, inflation and the global economy, technologization, militarization, and the creeping rise of fascism, wars, genocides… The list goes on.

Even when we choose to eat healthy, we don’t know where our food comes from. Even when ChatGPT helps us at work, each question uses up a liter of water to cool the servers. Even if we’re vegan, the meat industry still exists; even if we ride a bike instead of driving or take a train instead of a plane, excessive carbon emissions continue to collapse our ecosystem. We do yoga, we meditate, and we remain anxious… And then we like to think that art can make a difference, that it can estrange reality and inspire us to believe in what does not yet exist. That it can ease the fatigue of overwhelming news with shared moments that invite closeness and compassion, understanding of difference, while offering a cheeky resistance to the so-called “normal” that hasn’t deserved that name for a long time.

The poetic music performance Birds-Spies by young Croatian author Rajna Racz resurrects the silenced and persecuted voices of dissidents, exiles, and other inconvenient thinkers and artists of our time, with a special spotlight on Palestinian poets. Overwhelmed by the chaos of everyday life, Slovenian performer Luka Piletič, in his witty solo Under Control, tries to gain control over his own life (or at least toy with the idea) through elements of contemporary clowning. In the subtle and intriguing direction of Serbian director Tara Manić, we witness the chamber duo drama How I Learned to Drive, where the virtuoso acting of a powerful pair brings to life a woman’s childhood trauma in all the complexity of its relationships and situations. Internationally acclaimed duo Giuseppe Chico and Barbara Matijević, in their lucid interactive DIY musical SCREENAGERS Vol. 2, invite us to join in via our smartphones – together diving into the web, playing, and meditating on the many ways the Internet shapes our lives. Slovenian performer Nataša Živković presents her project Sonny, in which she questions gender constructs by exploring the phenomenon of sworn virgins (virdžine) from the Balkans, offering a drag-response to the question of survival in a male-dominated world. The festival will close with the spectacular Technoburlesque Image Snatchers by The Feminalz collective, fearlessly playing with social stereotypes around national identity, machismo, gender, political populism, and media melodrama, exposing the hypocrisy usually embedded in normative constructs. Throughout the festival, you’ll also be able to visit Pornocabin by author and performer Lina Akif – Čokolína, featuring her video works from her OnlyFans page, where she reflects on the housing crisis while simultaneously raising money for her future apartment – because, after all, the sexiest thing is having a place to live.

This edition of the Zoom+Igralke Festival was born out of a simple yet relentless fact we cannot control: the costs of organizing the festival rise year after year, while financial support remains the same. Instead of shrinking into unrecognizability or disappearing altogether, we decided to join forces and create a seven-day event combining Zoom’s postdramatic, international focus with the more intimate, author-driven theatre forms close to the Igralke Collective. Seven days and seven performances of political, intimate, and subversive stories in diverse and often hybrid forms will show that, even though we cannot control “a lot of things,” neither do dominant and repressive tendencies have control over us. We believe that in times of limitation, we must speak louder, create bolder, and persist more stubbornly. The festival is our form of resistance, and we invite you to join us.

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